Conservatory Part 1

30^th June 2023

When we moved into our present home, there was a kind of lean-to structure that was described as a 'sunroom'. We refer to it as the conservatory, but it's a bit of a future dream really. It wasn't in great condition when we got here and we did absolutely nothing to it, except use it as a storage space for literally JUNK! It's now completely derelict. 

So as it is part of the side garden I'm currently working on, I decided to start clearing it today.

Yes, there's a tree growing in the conservatory floor! [Sorry, the pic is sideways and for some reason I can't put it right :( )

I cleared the much of the mess up to the tree trunk and cut off some of the roots that had spread out over the floor. The mani root was obviously still in place. At this stage, I was pretty nervous about where the roots went. They were right by the rear wall and on the floor and I was concerned about the damage they had probably caused. 

 

I stuck a spade under the root to the front to see if I could shake off some of the dirt and see where the roots went. When I did so, the whole tree wobbled, making me suspect that in fact the entire root system was on top of the conservatory floor and not digging down into it. Thankfully, I was right! 

After a bit more snipping with the loppers - the whole thing just came away (I won't say 'easily' and it took two of us!)

Tree gone! And what's more - no damage to either the floor or the wall, none!

Root in the driveway waiting to be taken to the tip:

The stages of clearing the floor so far:

 

Stumpery to Shrubbery Part 2

 29th June 2023

Done a bit further today and found more plants - a hypericum, a rose bush and a choisya I didn't know were there, lol.

Sadly, I wasn't too careful pulling brambles through the bushes and the rose lost all but two of its leaves. I'm hoping though that it might yet recover.

You can see the bright green leaves of the choisya behind the staked plant in the foreground here:

The staked plant is in fact the centaurea, now neatly tied up and free of weeds.

And there is a gooseberry bush! It's squeezed in behind the aucuba, presumably deposited by some bird or other.

Taken out lots of brambles amongst other things. Won't be able to remove the gooseberry bush though, because it's growing in the roots of a tree. And thinking of trees, there are about 5 self-seeded silver birch saplings growing in there too. The tall green growth here is the group of silver birch trees. We know someone who wants some native trees, so when we pull these up, they will go in pots and if they survive, our friends can have them.

The pile of weeds and brambles piled on the bed and lawn; this was only a tiny part of the debris. I think we filled two cubic meter sacks with it all:

Showing the newly cleared area from the stumpery end - nearly there, I think. One friend did suggest I might meet Tarzan while in there, lol

Stumpery to Shrubbery

 28th June 2023

Having cleared the first part to the left of the stumpery in order to place Phoebe and the tree fern, I am now continuing with that section, heading towards the shrubbery. The shrubbery marks the end of the side garden.

I cleared a load more weeds and 'discovered' some plants I had forgotten about. The aucuba I knew was there. The hydrangea I also knew was there - it even flowered last year, despite being stuck in the middle of a weed patch and almost underneath the aucuba (I have a bad habit of planting things too closely, without taking into consideration height and spread). There's what I think is a spirea too, and a lavatera. The lavatera has fallen over to the left rather seriously but is in full bud. Until I started getting the brambles out, I couldn't see it at all and had completely forgotten it was there. I've forgotten the spirea so much that even seeing it I can't remember planting it

So this time, I only *almost* forgot to take pictures. The first picture shows the pile of weeds taken from round the back of the tree and stumpery. The modern urn features a few times before it finally finds a home!

Next is the aucuba, half hidden in the undergrowth:

This is the section beyond the aucuba. At this stage, it was, as far as I could tell, all brambles and ivy 

A view showing the full extent of the 'jungle' from the stumpery to the shrubbery, which is just out of shot to the left

While clearing the area, the urn got moved along a bit and is now sitting on the lawn, still waiting for a new home. (If you remember, it was in the middle of what is now the stumpery, looking rather sorry for itself).

Cleared all around the aucuba, which is when I found the plants mentioned above

Now you can see it properly, it really is an aucuba and is doing very well, despite not exactly having had optimal conditions!

The hydrangea is lying over to the left, but still growing...

...it even looks like it is going to flower 😘

Just behind the urn you can see a floppy looking plant. That's a centaurea that I salvaged from my Dad's garden, where it had been strimmed to within an inch of its life by a helpful neighbour lol. It is floppy here because it's past its best - the flowers have been and gone. I staked it after this and tied it upright so that I could clear the weeds from underneath it.

The lavatera - also leaning over....

...but absolutely full of buds ready to flower:

What I think might be a spirea:

I filled a cubic meter sack full of weeds taken just from that small-ish section:

That's enough work for one day!

Having cleared the first part to the left of the stumpery in order to place Phoebe and the tree fern, I have now gone a bit further. This first foray into the jungle is simply removing the weeds - digging out their roots will come later.

found a hypericum, a rose bush and a choisya I didn't know were there, lol. Taken out lots of brambles amongst other things. Won't be able to remove the gooseberry bush though, because it's growing in the roots of a tree. And thinking of trees, there are about 5 self-seeded silver birch saplings growing in there too

Stumpery Part 2

26th June 2023

Hopefully not sounding too weird, but I have this 'thing' where it seems like the garden tells me what to do - what features to create, what plants to put and where and so on. Well, the other day when I was building the stumpery, I 'saw' a statue of a Grecian woman with a water pot, standing behind the stumpery on the left hand side, with a tree fern behind her. Obviously, it was just the light through the trees, but it did seem like a good idea.

So I looked up tree ferns online with a view to buying one. But good grief!! What a price! Hundreds of £££, or else a tiny one with no stump at all, yet still costing quite a lot. And they only grow about an inch a year! So that's not going to happen, I thought.

Then yesterday, I visited a plant nursery I hadn't been to before and they had tree ferns with stumps - small-ish, but still a stump (about 4-6") - for a very reasonable amount (LOTS less than the £100s I had seen online; in fact about one tenth the price).

Then I also found a statue exactly like I had imagined. So, this morning, I removed an acer that wasn't very happy where it was and put it in a pot. Then cleared the weeds and periwinkle, and dug over the soil. The fern is still in its pot and is likely to remain in a pot, though probably one a bit more decorative than grey plastic! And 'Phoebe' is standing happily in front of it.

In front

Behind

From the side

This was the state of play on June 26th. Update today, July 9th, Phoebe is now standing on a small slab to give her extra stability and will be mortared in place when I do a job requiring mortar. The tree fern has been transferred to a lovely clay pot I happened to have lying around the garden. And I have planted some spreading. low-growing campanula plants around Phoebe's base, with a primrose of two to finish off the corner.

Phoebe on her paving slab with the campanula planted around her

The random pot I had lurking in the garden

Both together and all done bar the mortaring

NOTE: If you read yesterday's post, you will have seen I have managed to lose some photos. I now think I know what happened to them, but whether or not they are recoverable remains to be seen.

A Stumpery

 What, you might ask, is a stumpery? Well, it's like a rockery but made with tree stumps and logs instead of rocks. They were much loved by the Victorians to show off the ferns they brought back from abroad on their travels and are now making something of a come back. King Charles has an enormous one at Highgrove. Mine's a bit more modest lol!

I had an area that needed a bit of attention - well, maybe more than 'a bit' 😆 So I started by clearing it. As usual, I started to clear before taking a photo, but this time remembered part way through

Right hand half already cleared

The pile of weeds removed from left hand side

Showing from the left hand side - loads of weeds still to go!

So this time, I took a load of photos but somehow seem to have lost them :(  From the pictures above, you can see the area is flat and has some plants in it and a tree near the back covered with ivy. Son was home for the weekend and he managed to cut loads of the ivy off, using the axe. I dug out the plants I wanted to keep and put them in pots temporarily. Then I edged the area that is going to be the stumpery with some logs we had lying around in the garden from a tree we'd had to have cut down. I then covered the whole area with grass clippings to keep the weeds down and filled in the frame with soil. The soil came from a different area of the garden where I need to dig out a path, so killing two birds with one stone here! I did have pictures of each stage, but they have vanished, sadly.

Anyway, I made a mound. We gathered some old stumps from a nearby area of forest (pine trees) that had recently been felled and arranged them in the stumpery. There were a couple of ferns in the area before I cleared it and so I replanted those, along with several other plants - some from other parts of the garden and some from the garden centre. I also acquired some bluebell bulbs and have put those in as well.

View from the other side of the garden; the ivy covered tree is to the far right of the picture - minus its ivy, the mound has been made and the plants planted. Better picture below:

Once that was finished, I started to clear around the edge, beginning with the left hand side:

More tomorrow :)

One Garden at a Time

 Fast forward to 2023 (ie now). It's been rather wet and cool so far this year, apart from a couple of weeks when it was the exact opposite and everything got far too dry. But that hasn't stopped the work. In March, we had some work done on our roof and chimney and I used that time to clear the terrace (a paved area at the bottom of the steps in front of the front door). And I decided to start on the side garden. Why there? Because that's the first place people see when they come in from the driveway and first impressions count. After Dad passed away, I dug up all the plants from his garden and put them in a bed in the side garden as a kind of memorial garden for him.

The arch between Dad's memorial bed and the next one finally collapsed. It had been in for about 15-20 years and had rotted through on the legs. Then the bed the other side of the arch was overgrown with monbretia/crocosmia. I dug it all out, but kept the rose bushes, even though they are far too leggy. Hopefully that can be rectified in time with proper pruning. I also kept the London Pride. Everything else was dug out and replaced. I'm pretty hopeless at remembering to take photos, so none of the progress there, but I'm resolved to do better for the next project.

The side garden is divided into several sections - post box to lilac, lilac corner, lilac to tree, tree to shrubbery, and the two beds along the footpath. Then the - erm, what should I call it? Well, the conservatory. It's also in the side garden and was in a sorry state of disrepair. It had become a dumping ground for all sorts of JUNK! So what to tackle first?

I decided to start with lilac corner. Cleared the weeds, rediscovered some plants I hadn't seen for a while (some of them were none too happy and if I haven't done so already, will probably be moved elsewhere). I decided to turn the corner into a rock garden. The corner is a mound, with the lilac bush on top and surrounded by trees. I had a supply of free rocks, which I placed in a zig-zag pattern. I will need to collect some more to finish the job, but at the moment, they are buried under the growth where they are, so will need to wait until the grass dies down a bit. I also collected some larger rocks to place around randomly. New plants - low growing spreading rock plants, placed between the zigs and zags

Okay, that's enough for now - next project tomorrow

A New Start

It's been nearly six years since I wrote anything for this blog. Definitely time to put that right!

None of the projects in my last post were actually completed. My Dad's health started to deteriorate and I eventually became his full-time carer, which didn't leave any time for projects in the garden. Dad passed away, on June 13th 2019, which meant I had plenty of time on my hands. After returning to work for a short time, I finally retired in September 2022, so starting the garden makeover seemed like a good idea.

Six years of neglect does leave its mark - all the nettles I had pulled out in 2017 had returned and brought all their friends with them, plus a whole load of brambles and what seems like several million wild raspberries - you know, the sort that grow about 5 feet tall, but have barely any fruit on. Anyway, it all has to come out. And it wasn't just the vegetable garden that suffered. The whole garden was pretty weedy! So when the weather improved in the spring of 2023, I set to and began to create the garden I always wanted.

The garden is divided into several areas. There's the driveway, then when you come in from there, you are in what was call the 'side garden' (due to it being on the side of the house lol). Walking round the front of the house from the side garden you come into the main garden - that's had something of a facelift too. From there, round the other side of the house there is a the square garden - you guessed it, it's pretty much square! There is a gate from that garden, opposite the house, into the 'long garden', which runs the length of the whole garden, from the road to the end of the vegetable plot. Then we have the area behind the garages, the vegetable garden and the orchard - all of which are in serious need of attention.

To be fair, I actually started last May (2022), when I made the circular bed in the side garden properly circular and added suitable flowers. I bought some small box hedging plants and created four sections. The plan at that time was to divide each section into three triangles, then grow some tall plants in the middle section, with heuchera filling in the smaller triangles. Then my neighbour said she no longer wanted that urn, seen in the photo, so asked if I'd like it. Looks great in the middle of the circular bed.

Then, in October/November, when I raked and scarified the front lawn, cut back an overhanging branch of the beech tree, and sowed meadow grasses and flowers. I also mowed paths through the lawn so it looks like leaving the grass to grow 2 feet tall is deliberate. That same month, I cleared the bed from the laurel bush in one corner to the silver birch that's next to the beech tree. I planted hundreds of bulbs, pulled out all the brambles, dug it over, rescued some shrubs that had become swamped and planted a few other things too. The plan is that it will be a bed full of flowers for bees and butterflies. We had an old water tank from the bathroom too, that we decided to use as a planter. Still haven't quite decided what to put in it!

Didn't gpo a bundle on photos, so what you see is what you get lol